Black Desert/Valencia
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Valencia
the Kingdom of Valencia · the desert kingdom
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Valencia City, the capital From the Adventurer's Guide, Pearl Abyss
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| Ruled by | Kingdom of Valencia, under the House of Nesser |
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| Capital | Valencia City |
| Monarch | Sahazad Nesser, sixth king |
| Terrain | Great Valencian Desert, canyons, oases, coast |
| Settlements | Valencia City, Sand Grain Bazaar, Shakatu, Arehaza, Muiquun, Ancado Inner Harbor |
| Known for | Black stones, the thirty-year war with Calpheon |
| Borders | Mediah to the west |
| Player rules | Lawless inside the desert |
| Added | 2016, in two parts |
Valencia, formally the Kingdom of Valencia, is the desert kingdom that fills the eastern half of the world of Black Desert and is the largest region on the map.
Most of its territory is the Great Valencian Desert, the stretch of sand that gives the game its name. The kingdom holds the largest deposits of black stone in the world, which made it rich, and which brought the armies of Calpheon across its border for thirty years. Valencia won that war and still keeps the stone fields.
The region arrived in 2016 as a free expansion in two parts, and it enlarged the game world by roughly a third. Its architecture, dress and naming draw on the medieval Middle East, which sets it apart sharply from the European countries to the west.
1 Geography✎
Valencia lies beyond the highlands of Mediah, and travelers from the west enter through the Barhan Gateway. The green country ends within minutes of that crossing.
The interior is desert: dunes, wind-cut rock, canyons and buried ruins. Settlements cling to the edges of the sand or to the few places with water, and the Ibellab Oasis is the one dependable break in the deep interior. The southern coast opens onto warm water, where Ancado Inner Harbor gives the kingdom its only real port.
Two smaller deserts are named separately on the map, the Cantusa Desert and the Red Desert, so a crossing passes through several distinct stretches rather than one flat expanse.
2 The kingdom✎
Valencia is a monarchy, and the House of Nesser has held the throne since the founding. The current ruler is Sahazad Nesser, the sixth king, an easy-going man who inherited from his father Torme and believes the age of war is long finished.
Sahazad governs through his brothers. Barhan Nesser commands the army, and Manmehan Nesser administers the law. The arrangement is less stable than it looks, because Sahazad never received the golden key that has confirmed every legitimate succession since the kingdom began. Barhan knows this, and the question of who should hold the throne runs underneath the region's main story.
The royal family lived in Valencia Castle for three generations before moving to the palace at Valencia City, which remains the seat of government.
3 History✎
A black meteorite struck the land in the distant past and broke apart on impact, scattering the fragments that became known as black stones across the desert. An earlier civilization used them as a power source and was destroyed by them, leaving the sunken structures and wandering constructs that adventurers still find in the sand.
The fourth king, Imur Nesser, opened the darkest chapter. He tried to negotiate with the Aakman, the ancient people who guard the relics of that lost civilization, and ordered a massacre when they refused him. A plague spread through the kingdom soon afterward, killing the queen among many others, and Valencians blamed the killings for it.
Calpheonite priests instead blamed the black stones buried in the desert, and Calpheon used that judgment to justify an invasion. The war lasted thirty years, and the desert did much of Valencia's fighting for it. A single enormous sandstorm finally swallowed both armies and ended the campaign, and Imur named that ground the Red Desert for his own dead.
Torme Nesser, the oldest king in Valencian history, followed Imur and presided over a long recovery. Trade in black stone made the kingdom wealthy, and ordinary Valencians lived better under him than under any earlier reign.
4 Settlements✎
| Place | What is there |
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| Valencia City | The capital and the largest settlement in the game, built around the royal palace. It holds the kingdom's best workshops. |
| Sand Grain Bazaar | A market and military post at the western edge of the sand, and the last dependable place to buy supplies before a crossing. |
| Shakatu | An oasis town and trading center in the south, troubled for years by bandits working the roads around it. |
| Ancado Inner Harbor | The kingdom's only trading port, below Valencia City on the southern coast. |
| Arehaza | A small fishing village on the coast west of the harbor, with palm groves behind it. |
| Muiquun | A mining settlement in the north that shelters outlaws, and the one place in the desert an adventurer with bad standing can rest. |
| Ibellab Oasis | Water, shade and a bonfire at the center of the sand, treated by experienced players as the halfway mark of any long crossing. |
5 Crossing the desert✎
The desert is the harshest ground in the game, and the region is built around that fact. The map stops working inside it unless the traveler carries an Ancient Explorer's Compass, so navigation falls back on landmarks and the shape of the land.
Heat brings on heatstroke during the day and the cold nights bring hypothermia, and each drains health until it is treated. Purified water answers the first and star anise tea answers the second. Sandstorms do heavy damage to anyone caught inside one, so travelers ride clear of them or wait them out in a desert tent. Horses lose speed on sand, which is why camels and elephants are the usual mounts here.
Full article: Great Valencian Desert
6 Hunting and bosses✎
Valencia holds more hunting grounds than any other region, from zones a newly capable character can manage up to the hardest areas in the open world. The Cadry Ruins, the Gahaz Bandit's Lair and the Basilisk Den sit in the middle of that range. The two underground grounds, Aakman Temple and the Hystria Ruins, are the most demanding of all.
Two world bosses belong to the region, both added with the second part of the expansion. Nouver, a desert dragon, rules the open sand and drops the sub-weapons that serious players in competitive combat still consider the best available. Kutum, an enormous sandworm, surfaces underground.
7 Lawless ground✎
Combat between players is restricted across most of the world, but not inside the Valencian desert, where anyone may attack without warning. A killer is marked as a Villain for thirty minutes and can be attacked in turn, whatever their own standing. An adventurer who dies as a fugitive here is jailed underground at the Roud Sulfur Mine.
Pearl Abyss later reused the same rules for Ulukita, the region with the highest requirements in the game.